Papaya - a world class meat tenderizer, natural digestive aid, prevents ulcers, and also a soft contact lense cleaner.Raspberry
Premier Pregnancy Herb
Family: Rosaceae; (includes Rose, Apple, Almond, Strawberry)
Genus and Species: Rubus Idaeus, R. Strigosus
Also known as: Hindberry, Bramble
Parts used: Leaves, fruits
For more than 2,000 years, raspberry was considered a minor healer, a footnote under blackberry. But since the 1940s, it has emerged from blackberry’s shadow and virtually replaced it in herbal healing-all because it has become the herb for pregnant women.
The Also-Ran Herb
The ancient Greeks, Chinese, Ayurvedics, and American Indians used raspberry and blackberry interchangeably, as a treatment for wounds and diarrhea.
Seventeenth-century English herbalist Nicholas Culpeper recommended raspberry as “very binding” (astringent) and good for “fevers, ulcers, putrid sores of the mouth and secret parts [genitals] … spitting blood [tuberculosis] … piles [hemorrhoids], stones of the kidney … and too much flowing of women’s courses [heavy menstrual flow].”
The Eclectic text, King’s American Dispensatory, continued the long tradition of considering raspberry a footnote under blackberry, which it recommended as being “of much service in dysentery … pleasant to the taste, mitigating suffering, and ultimately effecting a cure.”
Contemporary herbalists recommend raspberry for diarrhea and to treat nausea and vomiting, especially the morning sickness of pregnancy. One herbalist goes so far as to call raspberry a “panacea during pregnancy … allaying morning sickness, preventing miscarriage, [and] erasing labor pains.”